Digital memory of the Shoah

Summary

Digital technologies and new media platforms are rapidly changing the ways in which individuals, communities and institutions produce memory. A wide range of new digital memory practices has recently been developed: from online archives, social media profiles, to interactive maps and multi-media museum installations.
In this project, nine European research groups collaborate to investigate the nature and function of such contemporary practices. Rather than formulating critique or even anxiety about future dematerialization of memory culture, the emphasis will be on the possibilities of the formation of memory in the digital realm. Focusing on Shoah Memory in particular, three expert meetings will result in a database of digital memory research, an open access handbook and a collaborative application in Horizon 2020.
In order to answer the central question of this project, 'what is the nature and function of digital memory practices of the Shoah?', we have identified sub-questions around three main thematic clusters. An expert meeting is devoted to each one: (1) interactivity and community (2) testimony, narrative and digital archives (3) performance, affect and presence. The meetings are not aimed at answering all of the questions, but focus instead on the meta-question: which research activities are needed to answer them in the years to come? Profiting from the expertise and wide experience of renowned international scholars and institutions, our interdisciplinary network is characterized by a critical, comparative, and trans-national stance towards Digital Memory of the Shoah.

Affiliated with

Duration

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) funds top researchers, steers the course of Dutch science by means of research programmes and by managing the national knowledge infrastructure.